Black lines cloaked an entire page in the Worcester Police Department's arrest log, which is a public record.

All that was visible in the redacted entry was the time and date of the arrest.

But Worcester police weren't skirting their obligation to provide public information — they are, instead, one of many Police Departments trying to adhere to a new law signed earlier this month.

A number of changes in the state's domestic violence laws were signed into law by the governor, including the removal of domestic-related arrests and calls from police logs.

Departments know the law, but some are hindered by needing changes in their computer systems. Others have opted to hand-redact the public logs.

On Aug. 22, a reporter for the Telegram & Gazette was denied access to the arrest log by Worcester police. The denial was quickly addressed after police officials learned that someone in that division made the decision not to release the log based on the new law.

"Someone made a decision that rather than redact the log, it would not be released," Police Chief Gary J. Gemme said. "When it came to my attention, we immediately took steps to correct that. It was decided to physically redact the information.

"It is time-consuming, but again, we have to respect the change in the law and our obligations to provide information to the public."

Worcester is one of many departments working to have the computer system altered to remove the domestic calls from the publicly available logs.

When a reporter reviewed the Northboro police log on Aug. 28, there were several calls listed under the family offense, which is their entry for a domestic call. A domestic arrest was also publicly available in the arrest section of the logs. The entries all occurred after the new law took effect. The law is aimed at protecting victims of domestic violence. Northboro keeps a log out in public view.

William E. Toomey, supervisor of communications and records for the department, said some of the domestic incidents available in the public log were printed before a fix in the computer system was entered.

The entries were immediately removed and were going to be redacted.

"Until the tweaking gets modified and solidified we will have to watch it and manually remove them," Mr. Toomey said.

There are different computer systems used by different departments. Northboro has a system used by other departments across the state.

A.Wayne Sampson, executive director of the Massachusetts Chiefs of Police Association, said the computer program vendors handling the different departments statewide are working on changing the software.

"We have heard that in several systems it (domestic calls) can be coded differently and just not printed out," Mr. Sampson said. "We are trying to get all the vendors to work with the departments."

There are options, he said. Departments could choose to put domestic calls on a separate log kept only for in-house purposes. While some chiefs may have differing opinions on the law's effectiveness, the departments all have to comply, said Mr. Sampson, a former police chief.

"From our position, we have to do the right thing now, and we are advising all of our communities to abide by the law as soon as possible," he said.

Leicester Police Chief James Hurley said his department is treating the domestic calls the same as sexual assaults, in terms of being public record. His department's public vendor is working on a fix.

"We are not 100 percent where we'd like to be, but we are getting there," Chief Hurley said.

Based on his reading of the law, Chief Hurley said he believes the domestic incident records can become public record after the matter appears in court.

"As an agency we are strong advocates of supporting the enforcement of domestic violence and providing service to advocates," he said. "I'm encouraged by the fact that the law goes in the direction that when we serve restraining orders those who are being served are also to be told where they can find help."

His officers now have fliers directing people to a list of batterers programs.

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